When Nicole Hockley's son was killed during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, she joined parents in calling on lawmakers to strengthen gun laws to prevent other families from experiencing such tragedy.

When passing federal legislation proved difficult in 2013, Hockley turned her focus to a more hands-on method to prevent school shootings : student-oriented gun violence prevention.

“We took a step back and figured, you know, something as simple as a background check to fail, that we were possibly addressing the issue in the wrong way,” Hockley said.

Hockley turned to gun violence prevention advocacy after her youngest son, Dylan, was murdered in his first grade classroom during the Sandy Hook shooting in Newport, Connecticut. She now serves as the co-founder and CEO of Sandy Hook Promise, an organization dedicating resources and advocating gun safety laws to prevent further school shootings in the United States.

In 2018, Sandy Hook Promise developed an anonymous reporting system that allows students to upload tips, photos, or social media posts if they believe someone is harming themselves or others. The reports go to Sandy Hook Promise’s national crisis center — the first nationally accredited anonymous reporting system in the country.

Sandy Hook Promise’s tool kit is responsible for the prevention of 13 credible planned shootings and 93 acts of violence with a firearm as of January 2023, Hockley said.

“We’re very careful on our stats,” Hockley said. “We only count the ones that we know for sure came as a result of our program, and that’s verified by the school teams and law enforcement.”

The tip line has received more than 160,000 tips since it launched. Tips spike during the school year and tend to slow down in the summer months.

Around 10%-15% of tips are considered “life safety,” wherein a student has formed plans and has access to weapons to carry them out.

Life safety tips are forwarded to law enforcement and the school, which are both trained by Sandy Hook Promise to respond to possible acts of violence.

In January, a shooting at a school in Florida was prevented due to the Sandy Hook Promise system, Hockley said. She did not provide specifics of the incident due to privacy reasons.

“It was actually from a tip that came into the system in October about a potential school shooting. ... The police made the intervention, but it took several months for the investigation to conclude to credibly associate that as a school shooting that was about to happen," Hockley said.

In the years following the Sandy Hook tragedy, school shootings and mass shootings are still commonplace across the U.S. Both federal and state lawmakers are divided on legislative action, from laws focusing on restricting gun access to improving mental health programs and resources.

President Joe Biden called for an assault-style weapon ban in his 2023 State of the Union address, while certain GOP politicians have advocated arming teachers to increase the protection of students should a violent situation occur. With political divisions stalling sweeping reforms, Sandy Hook Promise took a more personal approach to student outreach.

“If we can’t solve this problem through policy … to create social change, you need to create behavioral change,” Hockley said. “You can’t legislate for behavior.”

Hockley compared Sandy Hook Promise programs to the Designated Driver campaign , an educational program aimed at preventing drinking and driving by encouraging students in the 1980s and 1990s to have a sober driver if consuming alcohol. First, the behavior changed, then policy came second.

“Are there still drunk drivers? Yes, but significantly decreased. And that was a program that changed behavior and then was supported by legislation around things like blood alcohol content,” she said. “So, that’s kind of the model we’re following here.”

Since 1970, the U.S. has seen 2,032 school shootings , and the numbers continue to increase, according to Sandy Hook Promise. There have been 948 school shootings since the tragedy at Sandy Hook, and nearly 300,000 students have been on campus during a school shooting since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School.

Sandy Hook Promise aims to teach young people to recognize the signs of someone at risk for harming themselves or one another.

In 2014, Sandy Hook Promise launched its first program, “Say Something,” in the basement of a church in Ohio. Now, the organization has two core programs, Say Something and “Start with Hello,” that are implemented in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the organization’s two state partners, and in about 23,000 schools across the 50 states.

All the programs are provided at no cost due to grants and donations from federal and state governments, as well as from state partners. The anonymous reporting system alone costs just shy of $4 million to operate.

“Yeah, this is expensive for us to run, but we do it because this is our mission,” Hockley said.

Sandy Hook Promise programs provide students with a tool kit focused on “upstream violence prevention,” encouraging students to recognize the warning signs and take action. The early intervention model is designed to kick in long before students reach the point of picking up a weapon to hurt themselves or others.

A difficult hurdle to overcome at the high school level was students worried that they were “snitching” on their fellow students or that the perceived behavior is someone “just being dramatic” or “someone else’s problem,” Hockley said.

"When you see someone saying something or doing something, you need to take it seriously and act immediately," she said.

Still, the programs, which are usually taught by a teacher or during an assembly, can only do so much. Students have taken the lead and developed after-school groups known as Students Against Violence Everywhere clubs.

“This is really about youth empowerment because we believe in ensuring that they have a significant voice, leading how that change is sustained in their school or community,” she said. “If you create a club within a school that grows … they are the ones that are practicing this every day, keeping the lesson front of mind.”

Hockley continued, "I’m very conscious that we still have more to do, and, you know, since my son was murdered, this is my purpose. It’s what drives me every single day to ensure that school shootings and gun violence end. People are still dying, and we need to get ahead of that.”